Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic American biographical thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film follows the career of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The story predominantly focuses on Oppenheimer’s early studies, his involvement in the Manhattan Project during World War II, and his fall from grace due to his 1954 security hearing. Cillian Murphy stars as the title character, Emily Blunt as his wife Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a senior member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The cast also includes Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.
In 1926, the 22-year-ols doctoral student J. Robert Oppenheimer suffers from homesickness and anxiety while studying under experimental physicist Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Upset with Blackett, Oppenheimer fights back by leaving him a poisoned apple, then barely stops visiting scientistNiels Bohr from eating it. Oppenheimer completes his physics PHD in Germany, and later meets theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg at a conference in Switzerland. He returns to the United States, hoping to expand quantum physics research there, and starts teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and California Institute of technology; not long after, World War II breaks out in Europe. He meets his future wife, Katherine Puening, a biologist and ex-communist, and also has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party USA, until her suicide a few years later.
In 1942, U.S. Army General Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb after Oppenheimer gives promise that he has communist ties or sympathies. Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particulary driven by the Nazis’ potentially completing their nuclear weapons program that Heisenberg heads. Oppenheimer assembles a scientific team including Edward Teller and Isidor Isaac Rabi in Los Alamos, New Mexico to secretly create the bomb. Oppenheimer works with scientists to Enrico Fermi and David L. Hill, and he and Albert Einstein discuss how an atomic bomb risks triggering an unstoppable chain reaction that could destroy the world.
After Germany surrenders, several project scientists question the bomb’s continued importance, but Oppenheimer emphasizes it will end the war in the Pacific. The Trenity test is successfully conducted just before the Postdam Conference. President Harry S. Truman orders Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be bombed, forcing Japan’s surrender. Oppenheimer is thrown into the public eye as the “father of the atomic bomb” but the immense destruction and massive fatalities haunts him. He urges Truman to restrict further nuclear weapon developmen, but he president rejects Oppenheimer’s advice, calling it weak.
At a hearing intended to eliminate his political influence, Oppenheimer is betrayed by Teller and other colleagues. Strauss exploits Oppenheimer’s associations with Communists such as Tatlock and Oppenheimer brother, Frank. Despite Rabi and several other allies testifying in Oppenheimer’s defense, his security clearance is prematurely revoked, damaging his public image and neutralizing his policy influence.
As an advisor to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer advocates against further nuclear research, especially the hydrogen bomb, started by Teller. His stance becomes a point of dispute amid the intense Cold War with the Soviet Union. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss resents Oppenheimer for publicly dismissing his worries about the export of radiosotopes and recommending arms talks with the Soviet Union.
At a hearing intended to stop political influence, Oppenheinmer is betrayed by Teller and others. Strauss exploits Oppenheimer’s associations with communists such as Tatlock and Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank. Despite Rabi and several other partners testifying in Oppenheimer’s defense, his security clearance is revoked, ruining his public image and annulling his policy influence. At Strauss’s later Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce, Hill testifies about Strauss’s personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer’s deposition. The senate votes against Strauss’s nomination.
In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award as an act of political recovery.
This a really long film at over three hours in runtime. Towards the end, it does drag on, making you wonder if it will ever end, but the amazing story and outstanding acting and cinematography make up for that. There is a lot of talking, almost too much, but there is a lot action and drama as well, that make the movie entertaining. Nolan goes long and deep in the making of the bomb, an astonishing and horrifying process. He doesn’t restage the attacks though; there are no documentary shots of deaths or scenes of cities in ruin, choices that show his ethicality in directing. The horros of the bombings and the aftermath and the magnitude of the suffering they caused, permeate the film. Oppenheimer is a magnificent achievement in the art of filmmaking, absorbing the history of the story beautifully.
The story chronicles Oppenheimer, played with extreme intensity by Cillian Murphy, covering decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and it continues until his hair grays. The film involves the professional and personal achievements, including his work on the bomb, the controversies surrounding him, the anti-Communism and the attacks that almost destroyed him, as well as his romances and friendships that helped him grow, but also disturbed him.
This is a very deep story that is filled with event after event that Nolan tells with pure genius that not many other filmmakers today can do. He goes from color to black and white, zooms in and zooms out, uses intense sound effects and no sound at all, as well as intense effects to caputre the life of one of the most important, yet complicated men American history, a man who never won the Nobel Prize like he should have (yet 31 one other scientists on the Manhattan project did) for such an achievement.
Although the film doesn’t tell of his upbringing as a child, it does tell of his love for science at a very early age and how he got interested and started in quantum physics. Yes, it would have been very interesting to learn about Oppenheimer’s childhood, but it would have made the film probably close to five hours or more. There are books and documentaries that talk about his life as a child for those wanting to learn about it.
Yes, this is a really long movie. It does spend a lot of time on the hearings, but it also spends a lot of time as well on the concieving of the idea and the building of the bomb as well. Had the ending been shorter, you wouldn’t have learned much about Oppenheimer’s relationship with Albert Einstein, or how the hearings went down and their results.
Cillian Murphy is amazing as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a role only he could play. Emily Blunt is great as “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Matt Damon is excellent as General Leslie Groves. Robert Downey Jr. is outstanding as Lewis Strauss. Florence Pugh is really good in her role as Jean Tatlock, the psychiatrist and Communist Party USA member, whom J. Robert had a relationship and eventual affair with. Joshn Hartnett in his best role to date, is great in the role as nuclear phsicist and Nobel Prize winner Ernest Lawrence. Casey Affleck is really good as U.S. Army military intelligence officer Boris Pash. Rami Malek is good, not great as nuclear physicist David L. Hill. Kenneth Branagh does a fine job as Danish physicist Neils Bohr.
This film, though long and dragged out, still has Oscars written all over it. This is one of the greatest biopics of all time alongside others like Capote, 12 Years a Slave, and Schindler’s List. The way Christopher Nolan uses color, as well as black and white, and goes from past to present, to time periods in between, is pure genius. This movie, shot on Imax 70mm film, makes it as breathtaking as it is shocking, along with the fantanstic acting, costuming, effects, cinematography, and soundtrack. Nolan captures Oppenheimer and The Manhattan Project so spectacuraly, it sucks you in and takes you on a ride of romance, war, science, bombs, and legal trails. The director also uses no CGI to capture the effects, which very few directors today do, which make the film even more captivating and can lead it to more award nominations, and possible wins.
Overall, this is an extraordinary film, a must-see. If you only go to see one movie this year, make it this one. Sure, Barbie is cute and fun, but you’ll likely forget about it in a couple years or so. Oppenheimer you’ll probably never forget whether you’ve seen it once or over one-hundred times. Stunning, stunning, stunning, a masterpiece of cinematic art. 18+ 4.5/5
Psycho is a 1960 American thrilleer film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Martin Balsam. The story centers on an encounter between embezzler Marion Crane (Leigh) and shy motel worker Norman Bates (Perkins) and its aftereffects, in which a private investigator (Balsam), Marions lover Sam Loomis (Gavin), and her sister Lila (Miles) investigate her disappearance.
During a Friday afternoon engagement in a Phoenix hotel, real estate secretary Marion Crine and her boyfriend Sam Loomis discuss their inability to get married because of Sam’s debs. Marion returns to work, steals a cash payment of $40,000 entrusted to her for deposit, and drives to Sam’s house in Fairvale, California. She pulls over and falls asleep and is woken up by a police officer the next morning. Her anxious behavior makes him question her reasons and asks to see her license but lets her go. Marion quickly trades her car with Arizona plates for a car with California plates.
Marion stops for a night at the Bates Motel, located off the main highway, and hides the stolen money inside a newspaper. Owner Norman Bates walks out of a large house ovetrlooking the motel, registars Marion under an alias, and invites her to dinner. After Norman returns to his house, Marion overhears he and his mother arguing over Marion being there. Norman returns with the meal and apologizes for his mother’s anger. He tells her about his hobby as taxidermist, and his mother’s “illness.” Marion decides to drive back to Phoenix in the morning to return the stolen money. As Marion showers, a shadowy figure appears and stabs her.
This film has its thrills, but at times comes off as a low-budget exploitation film. Many times throughout the film, there is no dialogue, just music, adding to the eerieness and intensity, which isn’t a bad thing, as we can still what’s going on. It is more disturbing than scary. At the time of its release, this movie was considered super scary, but it is very tame by today’s standards.
Bates is very dark and very slow for its nearly two hour runtime. It has the thrill factor, the intensity, and the fine acting from all of its lead cast, but at times it comes off as cheaply made. It is only slightly entertaining, even though there have several remakes of the film and a TV series version.
This is definitely one of Hitchcock’s more gruesome films even though the gore is pretty mild, and even after learning that the blood in the shower scene was actually chocolate syrup, the scene is still disturbing enough and well done that it could still keep one up at night. Most of the movie takes place at the motel, so not much change of scenery, which may bore some viewers. Though this may not be Hitchcock’s best film in my opinion, it’s not his worst either. The plot may be simple, but the movie is well directed, well acted, and the effects are good too.
Only Hitchcock could’ve taken such a basic storyline and turned it into what many consider a masterpiece. He knew how to shock and amaze then and his films still do to this day. 18+ 3.5/5
The Menu is a 2022 American black comedy horror film directed by Mark Mylod and stars Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Holt, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney, Judith Light, and John Leguizamo.
Tyler and his companion Margot Mills travel by boat to Hawthorne, an exclusive restaurant owned and operated by celebrity chef Julian Slowik, located on a private island. The other guests attending the dinner are Lilian, a food critic; her editor Ted; wealthy couple Richard and Anne; George, a post-prime movie star amd his personal assistant Felicity; and business partners Soren, Dave, and Bryce. The guests are given a tour of the island by the restaurant maitre d’ Elsa, who notes that Margot was not Tyler’s original guest for the evening.
The courses and Slowik’s following speeches start to become more distressing and violent. On Slowik’s orders. one staff member kills himself and another cuts off Richard’s finger when he tries to leave the restaurant. The restuarant’s main investor, while strapped to a harness with angel wings is drowned in front of the guests, who later try to flee when Slowik gives them 45 seconds to escape, but are caught by staff and are threatened by Slowik that any attempts to leave will result in more severe consequences. Slowik proclaims all the guest were selected because they make a living off exploting the work of artisans like him, then declares that the night will end with everyone dead. Since Margot’s presence was unplanned, Slowik gives her the choice of dying with either the staff or the guests.
Slowik turns on Tyler, revealing that he was invited personally and knew all along that the dinner would end with everyone’s death, which infuriates Margot, since he knowling coaxed her to join a trap for dying. It is revealed that Margot is a prostitute named Erin (who had sex with Richard) whom Tyler has hired for the evening, knowing that she would die. Slowik humiliates Tyler further by forcing him to cook (which he does very poorly) in front of everyone, then coaxes Tyler to commit suicide by himself with his necktie in a nearby storeroom. Slowik decides that Erin belongs to the staff and asks her to retrieve a barrel needed for dessert, falsely saying that Elsa forgot it.
Elsa sneeks into Slowik’s house, which contains a replica of Hawthorne, only to be attacked by Elsa. Erin kills Elsa in self-defense by stabbin her in the neck. After seeing newspaper clippings of Slowik’s past life in barely decorated office, Erin finds a radio, calls for help, and returns ti the restaurant with the barrel. A Coast Guard officer arrives from his boat, bringing hope to the guests, holding Slowik at gunpoint. The officer then reveals himself to be a line cook in disguise and returns to the kitchen.
Due to Erin’s disloyalty, Slowik now claims that she belongs to the guests, but Erin mocks his dishes and complains that she is still hungry. Having just seen a photo of a young, happy Slowik working at a fast-food restaurant, Erin asks him for a cheeseburger and fries. Moved by her simple request, Slowik prepares the meal to her requests. Erin takes a bite and praises his food, then asks if she can get it “to go.” Slowik packs the food for her and let’s her leave. Erin finds a boat docked nearby and escapes the island. To end the dinner Slowik pays tribute to s’mores by covering the guests in marshmallows and and hats made of chocolate.
Memembers of the tiny 1% get stuck on an island owned by an amazing, yet insane chef and his equally talented cooks. The guests, aside from Tyler, Richard, and Anne, think they are just going to be tasting some of the most exquisite foods and wines in the world in a beautiful location. That is just a portion of what these guests get at this insanely expepensive restautant on the secluded island of Hawthorne. The food and wine may be considered tasty, but the portions are miniscule and the disturbing “performances” both leave you hungry. You think the first “performance” is just a show and the only one, until every course is followed by one, making it hard to eat, because you instantly lose your appetite.
This film is considered a black comedy (dark humor), but I don’t understand why. How is someone drowning, someone shooting themselves, and someone having a finger cut off funny? It’s not, it’s disturbing. I didn’t chuckle not once for the almost two hour runtime. I found that the violence was too much and with less of it, this would have been a very enjoyable movie. With a great cast, I was expecting something great, but what I got was just a long movie where people eat, drink, and die. The acting is superb, the clothing is gorgeous, the food is prepared beautifully, the scenery is breathtaking, but the story is weak. The entire film is spent in and around the restaurant, mostly inside, giving the film a claustrophobic, cabin-fever feel, especially since there is no way for guests to leave unless Slowik allows them to. It’s Slowik’s way, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Slowik is a very powerful and strict man with a booming voice and a stare that feels like it’s slicing you in half. He claps really loud to get everyone’s attention and every time he does, you jump and get angry. He is a brilliant, but twisted man and very unpredictable. He is equal parts intriguing and scary and the character seemed to have be created just for Ralph Fiennes.
This movie jumps from really slow to really unsetting really fast far too much, making it hard to enjoy. Why this is categorized as a black comedy I don’t understand. Death is not something to laugh at and the deaths in this movie are very obscene. They are over the top gory, where you want to look away, but you still hear the sounds and that’s just as bad. Most of the film is dark too, not just because it’s at night (aside from the begining), but it seems there is hardly any light regardless. Slowik may want a certain ambience in his restaurant and house, but it’s hard to see clearly at times and it’s hard to enjoy the movie overall because of this.
Normally I enjoy weird movies, but this one was not just weird, but so disquietning, that I found very little enjoyment in it, aside from the fine acting from the main cast and the lovely attire and food arrangements. Had I had known about all the grusome dying beforehand, I would have seen something else altogether, as that is more offensive and perturbing than entertaining. Adults only 2.5/5
Don’t Worry Darling is a 2022 American psycholigical thriller film directed by Olivia Wilde. The film strars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Oliva Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine. The movie follows a perfect housewife living in a company town who begins to sense that a sinister secret is kept from its residents by the man who runs it.
In America duran unspecified time period, Alice and Jack Chambers live in an a perfect 1950s-styled neighborhood in the company town of Victory, California. Every day, the men go to work at Voctory Headquarters out in the surrounding desert while their wives, stay home, to clean, relax, and cook dinner for their husbands. The women are discouraged from asking questions about their husbands’ work and told not to go out to the Headquarters. Margaret has become an outcast after taking her son out into the desert, resulting in her son’s apparent death, although she claims that Victory took him from her as punishment. While attending a party hosted by Frank, Victory’s mysterious founder and leader, Alice sees Margaret’s husband try to give her medication. Later, she sees Frank looking in on her and Jack while they are having sex in Frank’s bedroom.
One morning, while riding the trolley across town, Alice witnesses a plane crash out in the desert. She rushes to help and comes upon the Headquarters, a small building covered in mirror-like windows. After touching one, she experiences surreal halluncinations before waking up back home later that night. In the following days, she experiences increasingly strange occurrances. She recieves a phone call from Margaret, who claims to have seen the same thing Alice did. Alice goes to see Margaret and witnesses as she cuts her own throat and falls from the roof of her house. Before she can reach Margaret’s body, Alice is dragged away by men red jumpsuits.
Jack dismisses Alice’s calims and says Margaret simply fell while cleaning the windows and is recovering. The story is further backed up by the town physician Dr. Collins who tries to give Alice prescription drugs. Alice becomes increasingly paranoid and confused, and during a special Victory event, where Frank gives Jack an outstanding promotion, Alice breaks down in the bathroom and comforted by Bunny. Alice tries to explain everything to her, but Bunny reacts furiously, accusing Alice of being selfish.
Sometime later, Alice and Jack invite and rest of the neighborhood, except Bunny and her husband Dean, to dinner, with Frank and his wife Shelley as special guests. Frank speaks privately with Alice in the kitchen, implying that she is right in her suspicions. Propelled by his confession, she tries to expose him over dinner, instead, Frank gaslights her, making her look deranged to the other guests. In the aftermath, Alices begs Jack for them to leave Victory.
This film is a lot like The Stepford Wives, and at times seems like nearly a rip-off of the story. Despite the behind the scenes controversy with the cast, the acting is superb by nearly all but Harry Styles, but the story falls flat. It is far too similatr to The Stepford Wives and has a bit of a Desperate Housewives with an A24 twist, although this film was not produced by them. Harry Styles, isn’t a bad actor, he did a great job in his other film from this year My Policeman, but I think the reason he was just okay in this movie is becasue his character is meant to be handsome and empty. Sure he looks the part with his slim suits and perfect features, the camera loves him, but when it comes time for him to be deeply emotional, especially in scenes with Pugh, he doesn’t even compare to her talent in this one or his My Policeman role.
Much like Stepford, everyday is the same, the men leave for work at the same time with their fancy cars, gorgeous suits and lunchboxes, and go to their jobs at the Victory Project, which they can’t talk about with their wives. The wives spend the days cleaning, vacuuming, scrubbing this and that in their houses and maybe a dance class. There is almost always day drinking. Wilde plays Alice’s next-door neighbor with her cat-eye makeup and Cheshire Cat grin, she brings both mystery and arrogant sexiness and humor to the strange world.
Also like Stepford, the leaders are all about control: trying to keep mayhem down, which obviously doesn’t really work, because several neighborhood citizens start to get suspicious of the goings onaround them. The movie just gets stranger and stranger and really confusing at times. It seems to jump from one bizarre scenario to another. Some scenes are just plain weird and have no dialogue, only intense and/or creepy music.
This film, though classified as a physchological thriller, has the cerebral factor, but it is not as thrilling as most thrillers. So many scenes make no sense, like a scene where Alice is wrapping up leftovers with plastic wrap and decides to wrap her head and face too until she can’t breath and then rips it off. These moments are left unexplained until nearly the end, when you realize there really was something in Victory’s water, that it was all about control, mind, body, lifestyle. The leaders of Victory want to turn the residents into human robots.
The art of the film is flawless, from the brilliant cinematography from Matthew Libatique is, to the exquisite production design from Katie Byron, to the beautiful costumes from Arianne Phillips, which will probably be the only awards this one will win, because it sure as heck isn’t going to be Best Picture. You don’t learn the truth about Victory until close the end of the movie, but it takes a prolonged twist craziness to get there. Florence Pugh could win Best Actress, but she’d be the only one deserving of an acting award. The plot is nearly unoriginal, the film is pretty slow for much of its runtime and overall, just seems like a mess of weird events, some rather disturbing, filled with an attractive cast in beautiful attire. 18+ 2/5
The Good Nurse is a 2022 American drama film starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne as two nurses, one who suspects the other of being responsible of a string of patient deaths. The film is based on the 2013 true-crime book of the same name by Charles Graeber about the serial killer Charles Cullen. It was directed by Tobias Lindholm and also stars Nnamdi Asomugha, Kim Dickens, and Noah Emmerich.
In 1996, a patient admitted to the ICUward of St. Aloysius Hospital, Pennsylvania suffers a seizure. Despite the efforts of the hospital’s staff to resuscitate him, the patient dies.
Seven years later, in 2003, Amy Loughren, a single mother and nurse working night shifts at Parkfield Memorial Hospital, New Jersey, is introduced to Charles Cullen, an experienced nurse recently hired by the hospital as additional help to her shift. Uknown to the hospital’s administrative staff, Amy is suffering from cardiomyopathy; her lack of health insurance, lack of kin and the fear of retribution shoul her condition be revealed, prompts her to keep it a secret. Despite her condition, she has no other choice but to continue working as a nurse for another four months, in order to obtain health insurance to afford a health transplant. Charlie discorvers her condition and agrees to keep it a secret, also stepping in as a caregiver for her two daughters.
When Ana Martinez, a septuagenerian patient amitted to Parkfield mysteriously dies, the hospital’s administrative baord contacts the state police, represented by detectives Danny Baldwin and Tim Braun, to inform themof the incident. Nonetheless, the board, led by Linda Garran, the hospital’s risk manager, downplays it, claiming the death was unintentional and that the reason for reporting it was simply to go by health protocol. Regardless, Baldwin remains distrustful of the board, noting that it had acted to report Martinez’s death seven weeks after it had happened. He instantly zeros in on Charlie, noting that he had been convicted of minor charges in 1995. The duo begin interrogating the hospital’s medical staff; when Amy’s turn comes, she notices that insulin had been administered to Martinez, despite her being a non-diabetic. She is further questioned about Charlie’s character. but she speaks up for him. Braun tries to contact the hospitals where Charlie had previously worked at, but none are willing cooperate. Parkfield finally shares its investigation with the police, but Baldwin notices that it is fragmentary, leading him to snap at Garran for her being unprofessional, causing him and Braun to be banned from the hospital.
When Kelly and Anderson, another ICU patient, suddenly develops an odd cognitive symptoms, Amy discovers that insulin had been given to her. Kelly suffers a seizure and dies, despite Amy’s efforts ro save her. Baldwin and Braun subsequently visit Amy, revealing to her that Charlie had previously worked at nine different hospitals, and that none are willing to talk about him. Baffled, she visitis her friend Lori, a fellow nurse who had previously worked with Charlie at a different hospital. Lori reveals that during Charlie’s tenure, her hospital had dealt with the unfathomable deaths of numerous patients, with the finding of insulin in several of them.
With Redmayne and Chastain being two of the biggest names in film right now, and this being a true crime film and based on a best-selling book, you’d think this would be a really good movie, but it’s far from it. The story is great, the acting is superb, but the whole film is really slow, to the point of being really boring. The book is anything but boring, I couldn’t put it down when it came out, so when I found out there was to be a movie version starring them (and I’m a huge fan of both), I was expecting it to be outstanding and I was extremely disappointed. Not only is this film very boring, there is very little detail about Cullen’s life growing up, like in the book.
When you learn about Cullen’s crimes and how the other hospitals basically “covered them up,” it makes you question hospitals, health care, and the law then and now. Despite the slowness of the film, the plot is still bone chilling, especially learning that the horrific acts went on for years and years. This is a dark film and it has the feel of Ozark, which is another Netflix production and maybe it’s a Netflix thing that all new shows and movies and such from them have to look like this, which is a bit annoying and unoriginal and makes you wish someone would turn a light on.
Eddie Redmayne who plays Charles Cullen, is very soft spoken, except for to Amy’s daughters, which is not like the real Charlie, who is very talkative to most everyone. Ed goes a little broader in the final scesn but, he’s earned it, as for what he has been in up to that part. Jessica Chastain who plays Amy Loughren, is very shy, like the real Amy. Both Eddie and Jessica are great in their roles, but that may be the only awards this film wins, because I’ll be shocked if it wins Best Picture.
The film doesn’t go into nearly as much detail about Cullen’s crimes, life, and upbringing, but it does go into a good ammount of detail during the trials. Nnamdi Asomugha does a fine job as Danny Baldwin, Kim Dickens is really good as Linda Garran, and Noah Emmerich does a fine job as Tim Braun.
Had this film had more light and didn’t feel so Ozark-y or like an Investigative Discovery special or Dateline episode, it would have been more enjoyable. There’s not much gore or violence, which is odd for a crime film. You do see several sick people with scars and peeling skin and the interrogations scenes can be disturbing. There is lots of of cursing, but no drinking, smoking, or sex. Naked dead bodies are shown full frontal.
Overall, not one of Netflix’s best films. Go for the book, and skip this one. 18+ 2/5
